The Assyrian Empire by A. T. J.

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 6, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 30.

The Assyrian Empire.

By A. T. J.

By its lines of prophecy, the Bible does certainly give a complete system of historical views. And for any one entering upon the study of history, who wishes to obtain a ready grasp of all of its important points, from which any part of the great field can be entered at any time, and in any direction, there is no better way than to take up and follow the course laid down in the prophetic scriptures. We believe this to be the true method of studying the history of the world. In the Bible, God has just as surely opened to us the book of human history, as he has the book of human destiny. And we believe that we may study the one as well as the other, with the sanction of Him who ruleth over all.

The great field of prophecy opens with Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon at the close of the seventh century before Christ. But that we may enter this field understandingly it will be necessary to briefly sketch the history that preceded his accession and the establishment of the empire of Babylon.

In Genesis 10: 8-12 we read:—

“And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah: the same is a great city.”

Thus we are introduced to the founders, and to the history, of the two, afterward, rival kingdoms of Babylonia and Assyria.

With only occasional and slight variations, Babylonia or Chaldea, down to the time of Nebuchadnezzar, was bounded on the south by the Persian Gulf, on the west by the Arabian Desert, on the east by the River Tigris, and reached northward to the thirty-fourth parallel of latitude. It contained about 23,000 square miles of territory, being almost exactly the size of the State of West Virginia, or the present kingdom of Denmark. At the time when we enter upon its history the border of the Persian Gulf was about 120 or 130 miles farther inland than it now is.

As we have seen, Asshur went forth from Babylon and founded the Assyrian nation. Being thus a colony of Babylonia, it was governed for some time by Babylonian rulers appointed by the Chaldean king. It was not very long, however, till the Babylonian authority was renounced, and the Assyrians established a separate and independent monarchy in the north, while the Chaldean monarchy still flourished in the southern part of the great Mesopotamian plain. Thus Assyria reached from the thirty-fourth parallel of latitude at the south, to the thirty-eighth parallel at the north, and was bounded on the east by the Zagros Mountains, and by the River Euphrates on the west. Its territory consisted of about 75,000 square miles, being just about the size of the State of Nebraska, and a little smaller than Great Britain.

The two kingdoms seem to have passed along very peaceably together, Assyria soon rising to an entire equality with the Babylonian.

“Not only does she treat as an equal with the great Southern Empire—not only is her royal house deemed worthy of furnishing wives to its princes—but when dynastic troubles arise there, she exercises a predominant influence over the fortunes of the contending parties, and secures victory to the side whose cause she espouses.”—Seven Great Monarchies, Second Monarchy, chap. 9, par. 20.

These amicable relations continued down to the accession of the Assyrian king, Tiglathi-Nin, B. C. 1300, who aspired to transfer to Assyria the supremacy, which had been hitherto at least claimed by Babylonia. Accordingly he made war on the Southern Kingdom, and with such success that he was enabled “to inscribe upon his signet-seal the proud title of ‘Conqueror of Babylon.’” He reigned for some time at the southern capital, and, it appears, established an Assyrian dynasty there. But in the course of about a century Babylonia succeeded in throwing off the Assyrian yoke and again establishing her independence.

The next Assyrian monarch of more than common importance was Tiglath-Pileser I., whose accession dates about 1130 B. C. He tells us:—

“There fell into my hands altogether, between the commencement of my reign and my fifth year, forty-two countries with their kings, from the banks of the River Zab to the banks of the River Euphrates, the country of the Khatti, and the upper ocean of the setting sun. I brought them under one government; I took hostages from them, and I imposed on them tribute and offerings.”—Id., par. 41.

All this in his first five years. He afterward marched his army into Babylonia, where he remained two years wasting with fire and sword the northern provinces, and, although he actually captured Babylon, he did not hold it long, and, in his retreat, if his Babylonian opponent, Merodach-iddin-akhi, did not actually defeat him, he did succeed in capturing his idols, and carried them back with him to Babylon, where they remained 418 years, that is, until the tenth year of Sennacherib, B. C. 694, when they were recovered by him and carried back to the Assyrian capital.

The next of the most notable of the kings of Assyria, was Asshur-izir-pal, who ascended the throne B. C. 883.

“During the twenty-five years of his active and laborious reign, Assyria enlarged her bounds and increased her influence in almost every direction, while at the same time she advanced rapidly in wealth and the arts; in the latter respect leaping suddenly to an eminence which, so far as we know, had not previously been reached by human genius. The size and magnificence of Asshur-izir-pal’s buildings, the artistic excellence of their ornamentation, the pomp and splendor which they set before us as familiar to the king who raised them, the skill in various useful arts which they display or imply, have excited the admiration of Europe, which has seen with astonishment that many of its inventions were anticipated, and that its luxury was almost equaled by an Asiatic people nine centuries before the Christian era.”—Id., par. 66.

In the first six years of his reign Asshur-izir-pal successfully conducted ten military campaigns, and styles himself “the conqueror from the upper passage of the Tigris to Lebanon and the Great Sea, who has reduced under his authority all countries from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same.”

He was succeeded by his son Shalmaneser, the second of that name, who reigned thirty-five years. During the first twenty-seven years, he successfully led, in person, twenty-three military expeditions. Among the countries invaded, Babylonia, Media, Persia, Chaldea on the sea coast which was now independent of Babylon, and Syria (Damascus) are the principal ones. He led two expeditions into Babylonia, in the second of which he defeated and slew the pretender to the Babylonian crown, marched into Babylon itself, and then on to Chaldea on the coast, and so, as he says, the power of his army “struck terror as far as the sea.” Five times he invaded the kingdom of Damascus or Syria—three times against Ben-hadad, and twice against Hazael—and, after finally subduing Hazael and plundering his principal towns, the terror of his arms struck as far as to the Mediterranean Sea; and Tyre, and Sidon, and the kingdom of Israel under Jehu, hastened to make their submission, and to pay tribute, to the mighty Shalmaneser, king of Assyria.

Shalmaneser died and was succeeded by his son Shamas-Vul, in the year 823 B. C. Shamas-Vul conducted several military campaigns, the most important of which was the one against Babylon. The Babylonians, alarmed at his approach, occupied a strongly fortified city on his line of march, which he besieged and captured, slew 18,000 men, and took 3,000 prisoners, plundered and burnt the city, and pressed on against the retreating enemy. The Babylonian monarch, Merodach-belat-zu-ikhi, gathered together again his own troops, and those of his allies, “a vast host,” and met Shamas-Vul at the River Daban, a branch of the Euphrates. The Babylonians were again defeated, with the loss of 5,000 killed, 2,000 prisoners, 100 chariots, 200 tents, and the royal standard and pavilion, and “Babylonia, which has so long been an independent kingdom is reduced to the condition of a tributary of Assyria.”

Shamas-Vul was succeeded by his son Vul-lush III., in 810 B. C. Vul-lush was as warlike as any of his predecessors, and extended the Assyrian dominion to still larger limits. He exercised the power of a sovereign over Babylonia, and speaks of himself as “the king to whose son, Asshur, the chief of the gods, has granted the kingdom of Babylon.” From which it would appear that he made his son viceroy over the country.

“It thus appears that by the time of Vul-lush III., or early in the eighth century B. C., Assyria had with one hand grasped Babylonia, while with the others she had laid hold of Philistia and Edom. She thus touched the Persian Gulf on the one side, while on the other she was brought into contact with Egypt. At the same time she had received the submission of at least some portion of the great nation of the Medes. She held Southern Armenia, from Lake Van to the sources of the Tigris; she possessed all Upper Syria, including Commagene and Amanus; she had tributaries even on the further side of that mountain range; she bore sway over the whole Syrian coast from Issus to Gaza; her authority was acknowledged by the Phœnicians, the Hamathites, the Patena, the Hittites, the Syrians of Damascus, the people of Israel, and the Idumæans or people of Edom. On the east she had reduced almost all the valleys of Zagros, and had tributaries in the great upland on the eastern side of the [Zagros] Range.”—Id., par. 112.

At the death of Vul-lush, there was a pause for a period of thirty-six years (B. C. 781-745) in the “magnificent course of Assyrian conquests” which had hardly known a check for more than a hundred years. The kings that occupied this interval were Shalmaneser III., Asshur-dayan III., Asshur-lush, and Pul (2 Kings 15:19; 1 Chron. 5:26). And after Pul, in B. C. 745 there arose another mighty conqueror, Tiglath-Pileser II. (2 Kings 15:29; 16:7, 10; 1 Chron. 5:6, 26; 2 Chron. 28:20). Such an one was needed if the empire was to be preserved, for in the interval aforementioned, during the reigns of the three ease-loving, effeminate kings who preceded Pul, there was insurrection after insurrection, and revolt after revolt, and there was not enough military spirit in these kings to quell any of them. Pul seems to have had some enterprise, for he invaded Israel and took tribute from Menahem. But when Tiglath-Pileser arose, all the vigor of the old empire is again asserted.

During this season of weakness and revolt, the old Babylonian kingdom was all broken up by upstart kings. Nabonassar established himself at the head of affairs in Babylon itself; a certain Yakin, or Baladan, the father of Merodach-Baladan, became master of the tract upon the sea coast; and towards the north various princes, Nadina, Zakiru, and others, at the same time obtained petty governments which they administered in their own names. Nabonassar was the most determined and energetic one among the number, and he took a step by which he expected to be remembered at least—he destroyed all the records that he could get hold of, of kings who had preceded him in Babylon, and began to number the years from the date of his own accession B. C. 747, and thus came the “era of Nabonassar.” He held the throne of Babylon fourteen years. He was succeeded in 733 by Nadius, who reigned two years, to 731, and after him came three weak kings, Chinzirus, Porus, and Elulæus, by name, when Merodach-Baladan, who had succeeded his father as king of the coast territory, extended his authority over the upper country; and became king of Babylon in fact. Isa. 39:1; 2 Kings 20:12, 13. See Seven Great Monarchies, Fourth Mon., chap. 8, par. 5-9.

Tiglath-Pileser was no sooner settled on the Assyrian throne than he set about the restoration of the empire. He says himself that he immediately levied an army and marched against Southern Mesopotamia (Babylonia). He attacked and defeated several of the petty princes above mentioned, taking the towns of Kur-Galzu, Sippara, or Sepharvaim, together with many other places of less consequence in the lower part of the country, and received the submission of Merodach-Baladan, who acknowledged him as suzerain, and consented to pay tribute. But there seems to have been friendly relations between Tiglath-Pileser and Nabonassar, and as Tiglath-Pileser in his third year (743 B. C.) began his Syrian, Palestinian, and Phœnician wars, which continued with but short intermission down to about 732 or 731 B. C., it thus happened that Nabonassar reigned in peace in Babylon all his days, so far at least as the king of Assyria was concerned.

(To be concluded next week.)